Genocide committed by British Government
in Bengal was bigger, more ghastly and more cruel than the killing of Jews by
Hitler. Time that the criminals are punished and descendants of victims
compensated.

History is written by those who win a war and not by the losers. No wonder,
the history of Second World War is written by British and American authors.
We are told that the war was necessary to eliminate the evil of Nazism
and Hitler from the earth. Nazism and Hitler are painted as devils
because they killed six million Jews (a figure put out by British
and Jew historians and disputed by many).

The last chapter in the history of Second World War was written in
early October 1945 at the famous Nuremberg trial, when the four
prosecuting nations -- the United States, Great Britain, France and
Russia -- issued an indictment against 24 men and six organizations.
The individual defendants were charged with the systematic murder
of millions of people.

Sixty years after the end of the war, time has come to reopen the case
and institute a fresh Nuremberg trial - this time against one of the
prosecuting nations -- Great Britain -- for systematic and intentional
murder of millions of people. This genocide was not confined to the
Second World War. In fact, only its last episode was played out
during the war. The ghastly genocide, which used hunger and
starvation as tools, lasted for about eighteen decades and
was carried out in Bengal, India (at present Bengal is partly
in India and partly in Bangladesh) by the British colonial
masters claiming about thirty million victims.

It started in 1770 with a big bang, when approximately one third of
the total population of Bengal died because of a drought. About 10
million people died! East India Company, which had occupied the
country five years earlier, did not even once attempt to introduce
any measures of aid worth mentioning. British officers in India
were happily reporting to their bosses in London about having
maximized their profit through trading and export of food.
(Incidentally, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the prophet of
Indian nationalism, wrote his celebrated novel "Anandamath"
with the battle cry 'Bandemataram' in the context of the
agony evoked by the ravages of the famine of 1770.)

It must be mentioned here that Bengal is a land of rivers and most
fertile land of Ganges delta. Bengal was a granary of India till British
came in. Every village had, and still has, a pond, which has fishes
that can feed the village even when there is no rice. It needed
British intervention to convert the lush green land of Bengal into
famine-starved land.

Bengal had 30 or 40 famines (depending on how one defines famine)
during 182 years of British rule in Bengal. There are
no reliable accounts of the number of people who died in these famines.
We have only the figures put out by British colonialists. But even given the
limited data availability, once can see the barbaric face of British
colonialism in India.

The last big famine in Bengal occurred between 1942 and 1945. At least
four million people died during these three years. Some scholars believe
that the number of dead was much higher (remember that the figure of
four million is based on British sources). Notwithstanding the
controversy about the number of dead, it is widely accepted that
the famine was man-made. Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen, has demonstrated
quite convincingly that the famine deaths were caused by British
policies and not by drastic slump in food production.

The following facts deserve attention:

In May 1942, Burma fell to Japanese. British were afraid that Japanese
aided by Indian National Army (led by Subhash Chandra Bose) would invade
India from the east. Bose's slogan - Dilli Chalo (Let us go to Delhi)
- had struck fear in the hearts of British. The British followed a
policy of 'scorched earth'. On one hand, this was to ensure denial
of food to invading armies, in case the Japanese decided to march
across Bengal. On the other hand, the British wanted to break
the will and ability of people of Bengal to rise in rebellion
in support of the invaders. It could not be a coincidence
that British executed a military police action in October
1942, during which 193 camps and buildings of the Congress
Party were destroyed and countless people arrested. Between
August 1942 and February 1943, 43 persons were shot by
the British occupation police. Additionally, British
troops were involved in an unknown number of rapes
and lootings of food supplies, among other things.

Bengal was overcrowded with refugees as well as with retreating soldiers
from various British colonies which were temporarily occupied by the Japanese.
In March 1942 alone, around 2,000 to 3,000 British soldiers and civilians
arrived every day in Calcutta and Chittagong, and in the month of May, a
total of 300,000 were counted. As a result of the massive food purchases
by the government, food prices in the countryside skyrocketed.

Expecting a Japanese landing in the Gulf of Bengal, the British
authorities enacted the so-called "Boat-Denial Scheme" leading to
confiscation of all boats and ships in the Gulf of Bengal which could
carry more than 10 persons. This resulted in not less than 66,500
confiscated boats. Consequently, the inland navigation system
collapsed completely. Fishing became practically impossible,
and many rice and jute farmers could not ship their goods
anymore. Subsequently the economy collapsed completely,
especially in the lower Ganges-Delta.

The confiscations of land in connection with military fortifications
and constructions (airplane landing places, military and refugee camps)
led to the expulsion of about 150,000 to 180,000 people from their land,
turning them practically into homeless persons.

Food deliveries from other parts of the country to Bengal were
refused by the government in order to make food artificially scarce.
This was an especially cruel policy introduced in 1942 under the title
"Rice Denial Scheme." The purpose of it was, as mentioned
earlier, to deny an efficient food supply to the Japanese after a
possible invasion. Simultaneously, the government authorized free
merchants to purchase rice at any price and to sell it to the
government for delivery into governmental food storage. So,
on one hand government was buying every grain of rice that
was around and on the other hand, it was blocking grain from
coming into Bengal from other regions of the country.

The blank check of the government (for food purchases) triggered price
inflation. As a result, some merchants did not deliver food to the
government but hoarded it, hoping for higher profit margins when
selling it later. This led to further food shortages on the market
and to further price increases.

In addition to this inflationary thrust, massive military activities
in Bengal were basically financed by overtime of money printing presses.
Oversupply of paper money by Government led to a general inflation,
which hit the impoverished population in the countryside
especially hard.

Even though British law in India provided that emergency laws were
to be applied in case of famines, the famine in Bengal was never
officially recognized as such; an emergency was not declared, and
therefore no drastic counter measures were taken for its amelioration.
It was not until October of 1943 that the British government took
notice of the emergency situation, but it still refused to introduce
any supportive measures that would have been necessary.

Even though India imported about 1.8 million tons of cereals before
the war, Britain made sure that India had an export surplus of rice
at record levels in the tax year 1942/43.

The bad situation in Bengal was discussed in the British Parliament
during a meeting at which only 10% of all members participated. Repeated
requests for food imports to India (400 Million people) led to
the delivery of approximately half a million tons of cereal in
the years 1943 and 1944. In contrast to this was the net import
to Great Britain (50 Million people) of 10 million tons in the
second half of the year 1943 alone. Churchill repeatedly denied
all food exports to India, in spite of the fact that about
2.4 million Indians served in British units during the
Second World War.

Given a choice, I would rather die in a gas chamber than die of starvation
begging on the streets. Viewed from this perspective, Hitler appears humane
and even angelic, while Churchill puts even the devil to shame. The
thirty million men, women and children who died slow, painful deaths
in the villages of Bengal were not enemies of the British Empire.
They had done nothing to deserve the cruel fate. Howsoever much
one might disagree with Hitler, at least in his own warped logic,
he had a reason to hate Jews. British Government and Churchill
did not even have such a fig leaf of distorted logic to justify
their cruel barbaric act.

Amartya Sen has used the Bengal famine to justify democracy and run
down dictatorships. The fact is that Churchill was democratically
elected by British people. After independence, from 1947 till date,
East Bengal (presently known as Bangladesh) has been ruled by
dictators for many years. Yet, during the past five and a half
decades, the number of starvation deaths in East Bengal
(or West Bengal) is not even one per cent of the number
of people that died of starvation during the half-century
before independence. The issue, obviously, is not dictatorship
versus democracy.

We are also told that the rulers of Bengal, before the British arrived,
were self-centered despots, who did not care about their people's well
being and were spoilt by luxury. British take pride in the fact that they
brought 'good governance' and 'rule of law' to India, starting from
Bengal and spreading to the rest of the country. In spite of all the
alleged misrule that the Indian rulers of pre-British era indulged in,
there is absolutely no historical account of any major famine in
Bengal prior to the arrival of British in Bengal.

Academicians have a tendency to miss the holistic reality when
they go hammer and tongs over fine details. Most academic debates
about Bengal Famine have missed the most essential aspect - criminal
act of the British Government. There is a tendency to study the Bengal
famine in terms of parameters, which were internal to Bengal, like
food supply, disease history of rice, inflation economics, democracy
as a system of governance, weather analysis and many such wonderful
terms. All such studies treat the famine as if it was a product
of some systemic internal parameters peculiar to Bengal; and
all that is needed is to study the parameters with a view
to ensure that the same do not recur. This is a wrong premise.

Bengal was a victim of a criminal act perpetrated for more than one
and three quarters of a century. British establishment indulged in
brutal genocide in Bengal, at times to further their own interests
and at other times out of sheer negligence of their duties. In
either case, the British Government stands guilty of the worst
crime in recent human history.

The Holocaust in Germany was a minor event compared to what the
British did to a people, who trusted them and were loyal to them. Nazis
have been accused and convicted of the Holocaust in Germany. Even today,
there are attempts to hunt down ex-Nazis and bring them to justice.
A few weeks ago, a court awarded compensation to a Holocaust victim.

Is it not time that the descendants of the victims of The Great Holocaust
of Bengal sought compensation from the present Government of the United
Kingdom? Is it possible to initiate a criminal case against Winston
Churchill and all those who were in power during 1942-45
(or during 1765-1947) in British Government? Is that too much to
ask for? Do you believe that the systematic murder of six million
white-skinned Jews was a crime worthy of punishment, while the
killing of thirty million black-skinned people of Bengal does
not even deserve a footnote in history?

The least that people of India and Bangladesh can do is to construct
a memorial in the memory of millions who died at the hand of a cruel
barbaric monster. Let us at least shed a tear for them! Let us at
least rewrite the history!

Anil Chawla
4 April 2005

Acknowledgement: The author is indebted to many scholars
who have studied Bengal Famine. For the sake of brevity and readability,
detailed references are not provided. However, special thanks are due
to "The Unknown Famine Holocaust - About the Causes of Mass Starvation
in Britain's Colony of India 1942-1945" by Wolfgang
Pfitzner, The Revisionist 1(1) (2003), pp. 71-75;
http://www.vho.org/tr/2003/1/Pfitzner71-75.html.
Sketches given above are by Zainul Abedin (1914-1976).